This must be the most surprising news to hit the streaming service world to date. HBO’s successful streaming service iteration, HBO Max, is getting canceled and canned after only two years of operations.
HBO Max has officially been put on life support and is scheduled to be taken off it in the Summer of 2024. I really can’t believe I’m writing this.
Warner Bros. (HBO and HBO Max’s parent company) recent $43B (yes, that was a B for billion) merger with Discovery has brought about revolutionary change all throughout HBO, which is the reason HBO Max is being terminated.
With AT&T (Discovery’s parent company) and Discovery already owning a streaming service, Discovery+, it doesn’t really make sense for the mega companies to promote two conflicting services. And in the battle of value between Discovery’s Discovery+ and the recently-acquired HBO’s HBO Max, Discovery+ came out on top.
Nevertheless, it is still a great shame that the best streaming service on the market (in some people’s opinion) has been sacrificed for the well-being of Warner Bros. Learning from a poor launch (especially in the interface system), HBO had really stepped up their game in the recent months to make HBO Max one of the most user-friendly streaming services on the market.
And it boasts of one of the greatest viewing selections of all its rival platforms.
With the great success of HBO’s original series (such as Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Rome, Veep, etc.) comes the bountiful of rerun materials for HBO Max.
It is a great shame for a platform that holds Game of Thrones, Euphoria, Rome, The Sopranos, Irma Vep, Veep, Friends, Barry, Succession, Westworld, House of The Dragon (coming out August 21st) and many great original series to go along with the HBO classics to just disappear in two years.
Perhaps, if some of the DC movies had panned out, then Warner Bros. might not have been bought out. That would have saved the new Batgirl movie and Scobbie Doo movie and allowed them to actually see the light of day. I know I was looking forward to seeing Michael Keaton dawn the Capped Crusader uniform one last time.
Or maybe if HBO didn’t allow David Benioff and DB Weiss to completely ruin Game of Thrones and nearly destroy the potential of a Westeros-based cinematic universe, then maybe we would be seeing Warner Bros. actually earning some profits (rather than posting a loss of $3.42B).
Oh, well. It doesn’t do any good to reminisces about what HBO Max could have been. I just hope Discovery+ can be as good as HBO Max was, if not better.
Images Source: Featured Image: (HBO) (HBO Max – YouTube)
